IEEE Computer Society Newsfeed

A study of people taking IQ tests uncovered a correlation between their test scores and their browser choice. AptiQuant, which is self-described as a "psychometric consulting" firm, administered an IQ exam to more than 100,000 people who visited the site via searches or advertisements. The firm tracked the browser each test taker was using and later compared their browser choice to their test scores. They found there was “a substantial relationship between an individual's cognitive ability and their choice of web browser. … From the test results, it is a clear indication that individuals on the lower side of the IQ scale tend to resist a change/upgrade of their browsers.” The study found that the lowest scores were posted by Internet Explorer users, on average; Firefox, Chrome, and Safari users were in the middle of the pack; and Opera users posted the highest average scores. (SlashDot)(PCWorld)

A new report by Avast Software claims that computers running Windows XP are a source of malware that can continue to infect computers. The Czech antivirus company says the number of malware-infected systems running XP is out of proportion to the operating system’s market share. Of those systems using Windows, roughly 58 percent use XP; 74 percent of the rootkit infections found by Avast were on XP machines. Hackers user rootkits to remain undetected on machines so they can continue to use the infected computer as part of a botnet or for tasks such as sending spam. The researchers attribute the skewed numbers to the greater number of counterfeit and pirated versions of XP being used. (SlashDot)(Computerworld)

Georgia Tech researchers have devised a method for energy harvesting using antennas printed by an ordinary ink-jet printer. The ultra wideband antenna is able to harvest power from ambient radio waves of various frequencies, converting the AC waves into DC power that can be stored either in super capacitors or batteries. The antenna printing, although using off-the-shelf components, requires the use of a special ink that contains nanoparticles. This could eventually be implemented as a constant power source for RFID tags, enabling the devices to have more functions, including better security features. The technology could also be used to print components for RF devices as well as for sensing devices. (SlashDot)(eWeek Europe)(Georgia Tech)

Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, continues on his quest to preserve a physical copy of every book ever published as well as to digitize each of those. To date, he has collected roughly 500,000 books in his goal of gathering 10 million books, which is reportedly a collection equivalent to that of a major university library. The project grew from Open Library, which has scanned an estimated 3 million books that are now freely available online. Among the current projects is digitizing Balinese texts to support the continued use of the language. Many of these books were borrowed by Open Library from libraries for scanning. Kahle told the Associated Press that he noticed these books were often discarded by some libraries once they had been digitally preserved and returned by the Open Library because the lending institution may have concluded the book would no longer be needed after scanning. He is now storing books as reference copies in the event that there are issues with the digital version or for comparison between the digital and printed text. (Associated Press)(The New York Times)

Researchers have developed a prototype implementation of middleware to support end-to-end, deadline-driven predictability in Web applications based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA). A research team from the University of California at Irvine presented its results in April at the 14th IEEE International Symposium on Object/Component/Service-Oriented Real-Time Distributed Computing (ISORC 11).

Service-oriented architectures let application developers compose workflows dynamically from reusable services, but current SOA frameworks don’t support the end-to-end workflow planning and execution that real-time applications require. RT-Llama enables deadline-based workflow scheduling through advance reservations of local resources. The ISORC paper, “The Design of Middleware Support for Real-Time SOA” focuses on the design of the virtual CPU. Prototype performance results using real-world service applications showed that the VCPU scheme could complete requests with end-to-end deadlines.

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